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Josiah and The Journal of Lost Time · The Overland Journal Podcast

0:06
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overlandural Podcast. I'm your host
0:09
Speaker 1: Scott Brady and I've joined today by Josiah row Now.
0:14
Speaker 1: Josiah runs a bunch of really interesting organizations, including the
0:18
Speaker 1: Journal of Lost Time, which is his digital magazine beautifully
0:23
Speaker 1: produced incredible images and storytelling. But he's most known for
0:28
Speaker 1: his event programs, so he runs Moonlander event. He runs
0:32
Speaker 1: events in Oregon and Baja and around the country. Josiah
0:36
Speaker 1: is really well traveled. He also travels with a Volkswagen Syncro.
0:41
Speaker 1: So we have a conversation about the events, how to
0:44
Speaker 1: develop a community, but most important, we really learn about
0:48
Speaker 1: how Josiah has created a career that allows him to
0:53
Speaker 1: live and work from the road while he's seeing the world.
0:57
Speaker 1: So please enjoy my conversation with Josiah.
1:05
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3:13
Speaker 1: Josiah, thanks so much for being on the podcast with
3:15
Speaker 1: me today. It's been something we've talked about doing for
3:18
Speaker 1: a long time.
3:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like you spent a long time coming,
3:21
Speaker 3: but life gets in the way, adventure gets in the way.
3:24
Speaker 1: I think the last time we were able to really
3:26
Speaker 1: hang out was actually in Oregon and you had started
3:30
Speaker 1: a new event up there, and I just got to
3:34
Speaker 1: spend a couple of days seeing what you do, and
3:36
Speaker 1: I was so impressed. I've always been impressed by the
3:39
Speaker 1: work that you do, but I was really impressed by
3:41
Speaker 1: the overall tone of the event. It was very relaxed,
3:46
Speaker 1: laid back, It felt very community oriented. I was also
3:50
Speaker 1: really impressed by the fact that there were so many
3:54
Speaker 1: people there that didn't know each other, which is not
3:57
Speaker 1: always the case. A lot of times events be really
4:00
Speaker 1: clickie where they really just pull in the same people
4:03
Speaker 1: every single year. So let's talk a little bit about
4:07
Speaker 1: We'll start off by talking a little bit about your events.
4:10
Speaker 1: So tell me the I think you're up to four now,
4:12
Speaker 1: maybe five events a year or so.
4:15
Speaker 4: Last year we did last year we did six, which
4:19
Speaker 4: we did to six two years in a row, and.
4:21
Speaker 3: That was about destroying my life.
4:25
Speaker 4: It's I jumped into the deep end of the pool
4:28
Speaker 4: for sure, and yeah, yeah, it was no uncertain terms.
4:32
Speaker 3: It was very fortunate to see you at UH the
4:39
Speaker 3: nascent version.
4:40
Speaker 4: Of these events as we were still figuring out what
4:44
Speaker 4: they were.
4:45
Speaker 1: And what was that one called? What was the one in.
4:47
Speaker 3: Holy It's out on the Oregon coast.
4:52
Speaker 1: So neat. It was just it was such a pretty
4:54
Speaker 1: little spot, and like you like, I wouldn't be I
4:57
Speaker 1: don't think you could have more than one hundred vehicles.
5:00
Speaker 1: They're probably not or.
5:01
Speaker 4: Maybe the most it can fit because we take that
5:05
Speaker 4: lot and we pack it, and now the Port of
5:08
Speaker 4: Toledo has been kind enough to give us the sort
5:11
Speaker 4: of adjacent parking lot. I remember that we've maxed out.
5:15
Speaker 4: I think we counted at two hundred and forty one.
5:18
Speaker 3: Vehicles we can do, and.
5:21
Speaker 4: The last couple of years it's pretty much sold out.
5:25
Speaker 4: Hard to have an exact count on it because we've
5:28
Speaker 4: got staff and volunteers, and then some folks come.
5:30
Speaker 3: For a day or a night, or they don't come
5:32
Speaker 3: until Saturday, even though the event starts.
5:34
Speaker 4: On Thursday, so right around there feels like a good number.
5:38
Speaker 4: And it's also just been a joy to have the
5:41
Speaker 4: event be embraced by the town. We go early, we
5:45
Speaker 4: sit in on city council meetings. They're all about the
5:49
Speaker 4: town being a van life and overland or friendly town.
5:54
Speaker 3: They want more to homes.
5:55
Speaker 4: There's never gonna they're never going to ban overnight parking,
6:00
Speaker 4: talking about adding in paid tot showers.
6:02
Speaker 3: Like it's become like this happy.
6:05
Speaker 4: Thing that Toledo is using as an economic development driver
6:08
Speaker 4: for the town because it was it is a mill town,
6:11
Speaker 4: and they're looking to how can we get more folks
6:14
Speaker 4: and housing is a crisis in this country and what
6:18
Speaker 4: can we do to make it easier for people to
6:21
Speaker 4: be here?
6:22
Speaker 3: And we love it.
6:23
Speaker 1: We felt that way, Yeah, it really felt that way.
6:26
Speaker 1: And it was so close to go walk downtown, get
6:28
Speaker 1: a meal, had a great little breakfast at this little
6:31
Speaker 1: jam and little breakfast joint that was. And then one
6:38
Speaker 1: of the things I really liked is that you're right
6:40
Speaker 1: next to the marina, and I was and I love
6:44
Speaker 1: boats as well. So I'm walking through the marina and
6:47
Speaker 1: there was this historic wooden sailboat club and some of
6:52
Speaker 1: these sailboats were over one hundred years old and they
6:55
Speaker 1: were fairly small, but like they still had little cabins
6:58
Speaker 1: and stuff in them, and it was just very cool.
7:01
Speaker 1: And when I got a chance to experience that, Josiah,
7:06
Speaker 1: it was just I realize that what you were doing
7:08
Speaker 1: was not only very different, but it was very necessary.
7:12
Speaker 1: So that's why I wanted to have you on the podcast.
7:15
Speaker 1: I just want people to know that there are other
7:18
Speaker 1: kinds of events out there that are much smaller in footprint,
7:23
Speaker 1: they're much more community like connected experiences. And I think
7:29
Speaker 1: it's also you've done a good job of not over
7:33
Speaker 1: hyping the experience or over selling what you're doing, which
7:37
Speaker 1: I think some events can really do or they can
7:40
Speaker 1: be too commercial. You've done a good job of striking
7:43
Speaker 1: the balance. You've also been really careful with the brands
7:45
Speaker 1: that you associate with. When it comes to events, What
7:50
Speaker 1: do you think is most needed right now? What is it?
7:52
Speaker 1: Because there's a lot of overland events in the country now.
7:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's this.
7:57
Speaker 4: It's core, It comes down to really on a personal level.
8:02
Speaker 4: But it's also i would say, very much shared by
8:04
Speaker 4: what is now a team of very tightly net folks
8:09
Speaker 4: because now we've been through we've been through some battles,
8:12
Speaker 4: we've been through some growing pains.
8:14
Speaker 3: Fundamentally, it's a.
8:15
Speaker 4: Belief that humans are all we got and it's a
8:18
Speaker 4: beautiful thing when we come together and the events or
8:21
Speaker 4: how we show light in the darkness. We just say that,
8:25
Speaker 4: And one of our taglines that we use for all
8:27
Speaker 4: the events is that we go further together. Navigating how
8:31
Speaker 4: to do that has been a humbling and constant learning experience.
8:38
Speaker 4: One of the fundamental things in the design of these
8:42
Speaker 4: events and where we locate them is that they are
8:47
Speaker 4: not just a place for people that enjoy adventure and
8:51
Speaker 4: exploration via vehicles, whether they're awesome land rovers or a
8:57
Speaker 4: pro master or some climber took his mom's astro van
9:02
Speaker 4: gutted it and did a diy kit. It's also deeply
9:04
Speaker 4: rooted and integrated into the place where they're held. Like
9:07
Speaker 4: in the town of Toledo on the Oregon Coast, it's
9:10
Speaker 4: become very much a very food centric event.
9:13
Speaker 3: A lot of local fishermen and oyster farm and.
9:16
Speaker 4: The Oregon Coast Visitors Association and Travel Oregon have really
9:19
Speaker 4: gotten behind it with the Sustainable Seafood program. So for
9:23
Speaker 4: all of us who are like on the road, we
9:24
Speaker 4: get to come and eat like kings and queens for
9:26
Speaker 4: a weekend of all this like fresh, local.
9:29
Speaker 3: Seafood and produce. But the town's very involved.
9:32
Speaker 4: They come down and listen to all the music and
9:34
Speaker 4: it's become this blendid thing. But that sort of framework
9:38
Speaker 4: exists even at an event like Toledo, which is one
9:41
Speaker 4: of our smaller ones, or our largest one, which is
9:45
Speaker 4: down and actually in bas outside of La Paz, the
9:47
Speaker 4: capitol of bah California, Sir, which is where I'm at
9:50
Speaker 4: right now, which will have something like fifteen hundred vans
9:56
Speaker 4: and overlanders.
9:57
Speaker 3: But then there'll be another.
9:58
Speaker 1: Thing that's very cool.
10:00
Speaker 4: There'll be another thousand locals on top of it, and
10:03
Speaker 4: there's an entire we I can reveal some of the
10:06
Speaker 4: stuff because I've been dealing with it every day while
10:08
Speaker 4: I'm down here. We have a lighthouse we've effectively rented,
10:12
Speaker 4: and we light it up with LEDs and lasers and
10:14
Speaker 4: it becomes a big local art gallery from around the peninsula.
10:19
Speaker 4: All these artists come in and set up. There's a
10:21
Speaker 4: huge food programming section with all these local chefs, and
10:25
Speaker 4: of course they're showing off for each other and having
10:27
Speaker 4: a time. And it's nice because we're on the Pan Americans,
10:31
Speaker 4: so we get already this internationally diverse group. There's always
10:34
Speaker 4: a caravan at Germans on their paid eighteen months of
10:39
Speaker 4: maternity and paternity leave.
10:41
Speaker 3: You know, one years old, ovelt around and.
10:45
Speaker 4: They have their beer night, which is a trip never
10:47
Speaker 4: go beer for beer with German.
10:49
Speaker 3: We had a big French component that list past year.
10:52
Speaker 3: They were hilarious.
10:53
Speaker 1: Love I love the French travelers because they just don't care.
10:56
Speaker 1: They're going to bring they have five kids with them.
10:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, do not care at all.
11:00
Speaker 1: They'll be in like some little renault. Makes no sense
11:04
Speaker 1: camp or van has already gone like across the Silk Road.
11:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it looks like it's been absolutely Yeah. They
11:12
Speaker 4: and they just rolled right into center camp and just
11:14
Speaker 4: made crapes one morning and.
11:16
Speaker 1: Just yeah, they literally they don't care, which I love.
11:19
Speaker 1: That sounds incredible. And you know, La Pause is a
11:25
Speaker 1: little bit of a sleeper for a lot of people
11:27
Speaker 1: that view it as that's where the ferry goes out of.
11:29
Speaker 1: But the reality is that it's a thousand times better
11:34
Speaker 1: than Cabo.
11:35
Speaker 3: Oh it's is just it's terrible. I hate it, don't
11:40
Speaker 3: care for it personally.
11:42
Speaker 1: And it used to be that you could escape Cabo
11:44
Speaker 1: by going up the East Cape and that's all now
11:47
Speaker 1: completely slowly yea. So La Pause is is really and
11:53
Speaker 1: there's a lot of actually places to go to and
11:56
Speaker 1: there's an incredible route that comes from the north along
12:00
Speaker 1: the coast to.
12:01
Speaker 3: La Pause and you've got to have a four by
12:03
Speaker 3: florid to do do.
12:04
Speaker 1: But yeah, a little bay called Santa Maveristo and it's
12:07
Speaker 1: just oh, that whole area is in incredible.
12:11
Speaker 4: Where we had to move the event this year because
12:15
Speaker 4: they're where we're doing it before, which is ply Techa Loote,
12:18
Speaker 4: which is like like the city beach for La Pause.
12:22
Speaker 4: There's a group trying to do a massive development project
12:25
Speaker 4: that leads all the way up to it with like
12:27
Speaker 4: condos and the rest and Arvet was caught in the
12:30
Speaker 4: middle because the developers didn't know if we were in
12:33
Speaker 4: their way. And then you've got like the nonprofit conservation
12:37
Speaker 4: organizations which we do a lot of work with, and.
12:40
Speaker 3: So we're like, we're just going.
12:41
Speaker 4: To move up that road towards Santa Maristo and San
12:44
Speaker 4: Juande Costa and a spot like it's just like amazing.
12:47
Speaker 3: I can some of those cliffs.
12:49
Speaker 1: Back in there have colors that I've never seen on
12:53
Speaker 1: the earth like it there's a painted desert right there.
12:56
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
12:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a basically a quarter mile from where the location.
13:02
Speaker 3: Will be and well you'll be able to go to
13:04
Speaker 3: it from the event.
13:05
Speaker 4: There's this amazing hike you can do into this slot
13:07
Speaker 4: canyon where you get back in there and then you
13:09
Speaker 4: get all the crazy the geological term for strata that stratefications,
13:13
Speaker 4: all different colors like that. It's just beautiful up there.
13:16
Speaker 4: And that's not and that's just like this the.
13:18
Speaker 3: Start of it.
13:19
Speaker 1: It's not got me.
13:19
Speaker 3: It's still another hour.
13:20
Speaker 1: And a half. Got me sold? When does this thing start?
13:23
Speaker 3: January ninth to February third?
13:24
Speaker 1: Sorry, so you're doing some prep right now for it?
13:27
Speaker 3: Oh, one hundred percent? Like I'm in la pause.
13:29
Speaker 4: I yeah, Like I I had accidentally double booked this
13:32
Speaker 4: call with another meeting. But it's non stop because it's
13:35
Speaker 4: becomes such a it's a very locally integrated event at
13:38
Speaker 4: this point, Like I have effectively a analogous.
13:42
Speaker 3: Event team down here made.
13:45
Speaker 4: Up of pasanos or locals that you just have to have.
13:50
Speaker 1: I can't have.
13:51
Speaker 4: Somebody managing twenty restaurants tours that isn't here to now.
13:56
Speaker 4: I know most of them, and I spend six months
13:59
Speaker 4: out of every year year down on the pause. He
14:01
Speaker 4: was a fell in love with it a decade ago
14:02
Speaker 4: because it's walkable.
14:04
Speaker 3: It's really great for getting work done on a Vannigain
14:07
Speaker 3: on the cheap.
14:09
Speaker 1: I think we finally figured you out.
14:11
Speaker 3: Man.
14:11
Speaker 1: You have hacked your way into this ideal little program.
14:15
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
14:15
Speaker 4: It's a it's a beautiful city and and all the
14:17
Speaker 4: places we do our events are very They've all been
14:20
Speaker 4: some of my personal favorite places too.
14:23
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to block out due January. You
14:25
Speaker 1: said January ninth through.
14:27
Speaker 4: What Yeah, January twenty ninth through February third. All right,
14:31
Speaker 4: you should definitely come down. No, I'm a Buggantina and
14:34
Speaker 4: Brian about it.
14:35
Speaker 3: I'm like, get that here, you.
14:36
Speaker 1: Guys, and yeah, actually's always doing something like I just
14:39
Speaker 1: need to do it because i want to do another
14:42
Speaker 1: trip all the way down to the to Tota Santos.
14:45
Speaker 1: I've got good friends that live there, so oh cool,
14:48
Speaker 1: I just ride a motorcycle down'd be great.
14:51
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, there's a big moto camping little area. Because
14:54
Speaker 4: the event was a techlote and it was donation based,
14:59
Speaker 4: which is why I always lost money on it.
15:01
Speaker 3: Hopefully not this next year.
15:02
Speaker 4: It's hard to know who was coming, and there would
15:04
Speaker 4: be forty adventure riders come barrel in and they set
15:08
Speaker 4: up their little tent city back in the dunes, and yeah,
15:11
Speaker 4: that's great, it's great.
15:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, it became so big as you can't meet everyone.
15:15
Speaker 1: And it sounds incredible. And we could spend the entire
15:19
Speaker 1: hour talking about why all the events are amazing, because
15:22
Speaker 1: you've got the Moonlander one in New Mexico and that's
15:24
Speaker 1: like all about the celestial bodies in the in the
15:28
Speaker 1: night sky and beautiful remote area. Yeah, and a lot
15:32
Speaker 1: of overland components to them. Where do people go to
15:36
Speaker 1: find out about all of the events.
15:38
Speaker 4: You can go to the Journal of Lost Time dot
15:40
Speaker 4: com and click on the or you tjo lt dot
15:43
Speaker 4: com and hit the events button in the top right.
15:46
Speaker 3: Okay, perfect, and you can see the list in there.
15:48
Speaker 3: There's also some that we are like, for example, we
15:51
Speaker 3: started a couple.
15:52
Speaker 4: Of years ago because the women on our team and
15:54
Speaker 4: in the community are like, we want a women only
15:58
Speaker 4: gathering that we want to do, and I was like, okay,
16:02
Speaker 4: let's go. And a little bit of my naive tay
16:05
Speaker 4: because I'm not like an influence in the sense I
16:07
Speaker 4: don't talk into my phone and do that kind of thing.
16:09
Speaker 4: It's only even recently I've started doing my podcasts and
16:12
Speaker 4: stuff like this.
16:13
Speaker 3: I thought that.
16:16
Speaker 4: Like me as a man, wouldn't be seen as like
16:18
Speaker 4: the person running that event, but it was. The women
16:21
Speaker 4: had a great time with an and have had a
16:23
Speaker 4: great time with it. But I decided this year, we
16:26
Speaker 4: decided as a team to give it to Summer, who's
16:30
Speaker 4: the chief marketing officer at Storyteller Overland. And it's a
16:35
Speaker 4: break even event. It's not one that was making a
16:38
Speaker 4: ton of money. So it's not like I was watching
16:39
Speaker 4: this just on the financial side of thing, but it
16:41
Speaker 4: was like I wanted to see that really owned by
16:43
Speaker 4: women here leaders in our space. And so you built
16:47
Speaker 4: this thing and it's it's a really beautiful part of
16:49
Speaker 4: southern California.
16:51
Speaker 1: It's the name of that event, a roam of our own, okay.
16:54
Speaker 1: And then about what time of the year is.
16:57
Speaker 4: It was in March, but they're going to move it
16:59
Speaker 4: to April because has gotten so popular and now, just
17:03
Speaker 4: based on my guesstimation, and I also know just from
17:05
Speaker 4: the numbers, more and more women feel safe going down there,
17:08
Speaker 4: and it's just so perfect. It doesn't really start getting
17:12
Speaker 4: hot in the not fun way until April, and we
17:16
Speaker 4: wanted we effectively canceled our April event in Bisbee, which
17:21
Speaker 4: is a great town and it was a very successful event,
17:24
Speaker 4: but it was very spread out. Yeah, Bisbee is amazing,
17:27
Speaker 4: and but the event was like held in different parking
17:30
Speaker 4: lots all throughout the town, so it made it difficult
17:31
Speaker 4: to have a center camp and also just very became
17:35
Speaker 4: a very drinking oriented centric event with all the bars
17:38
Speaker 4: opening early. I want to drink as much as the
17:40
Speaker 4: next person, but suddenly being responsible for hundreds of drug
17:43
Speaker 4: people wasn't exactly what I signed up for.
17:46
Speaker 1: So and that road, that road is literally constructed to
17:49
Speaker 1: run people over. Yeah, it's just the road through town
17:53
Speaker 1: is like literally made with these super narrow verbs and
17:57
Speaker 1: you can't see around the corner, so I could drunk
18:00
Speaker 1: people getting oh.
18:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody. Everybody's on their e bikes or one wheels
18:05
Speaker 3: or like all their.
18:06
Speaker 4: Goofies or their little like fifty cc yeah whatever, and
18:11
Speaker 4: I'm like, I don't want to feel Yeah, So we
18:14
Speaker 4: decided to effectively cancel that one.
18:17
Speaker 3: Move the women's only one there.
18:20
Speaker 4: But we're still like the big marketing promoter promoter of it,
18:24
Speaker 4: and then we're moving our I need to check the
18:28
Speaker 4: dates we're moving our.
18:31
Speaker 3: Event called the Caravan, which we did in June. This year,
18:35
Speaker 3: we're going to move it up to May just to
18:37
Speaker 3: really try to avoid the heat wave because this year
18:39
Speaker 3: we got nailed with.
18:42
Speaker 4: Ninety five one hundred degree days, which if weren't for
18:44
Speaker 4: the lake we had there, it would have been impossible.
18:47
Speaker 4: So I just want to try to hit the temperature
18:48
Speaker 4: just right. It's in a Naturida, about an hour west
18:51
Speaker 4: of Tell You're right on the west slope. It's a
18:52
Speaker 4: gorgeous locations.
18:54
Speaker 3: Called Camp v Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to get
18:58
Speaker 3: the weather and the timing there.
19:00
Speaker 4: And of course it's less than a day's drive from West,
19:04
Speaker 4: so it makes it easy for folks, which was a
19:06
Speaker 4: lot of the feedback from some of the brand sponsors
19:08
Speaker 4: and exhibitors.
19:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, make it easy to go from.
19:10
Speaker 4: Now they're like, hey, can you put it a weekend
19:12
Speaker 4: or two weekends after West so we don't have to
19:14
Speaker 4: like drive all the way back and then drive out.
19:16
Speaker 3: You know how works works, So shifting things around.
19:20
Speaker 1: Maybe going back in time a while. What got you
19:25
Speaker 1: interested in travel to begin with?
19:28
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question.
19:28
Speaker 4: I spent my twenties building my first company. Then I
19:31
Speaker 4: hit reset on life and moved to San Francisco and
19:33
Speaker 4: coming from this is not meant to be a knock
19:36
Speaker 4: on the on the eastern half of North America, but
19:40
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, it was the western half.
19:42
Speaker 3: I think in ninety to nine times out of one hundred, throw.
19:46
Speaker 4: A dart at anything west of Denver and it's gorgeous
19:51
Speaker 4: and pretty special.
19:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep.
19:53
Speaker 4: And started up back when I was younger and probably
19:55
Speaker 4: thirty pounds thinner man was doing a lot of trail running.
19:58
Speaker 4: And you start trail running in the hills, look in
20:00
Speaker 4: the ocean, and we're in county and they meet some
20:03
Speaker 4: of their like you can go to the top of mountains,
20:05
Speaker 4: and then I always enjoy traveling, and then it just
20:08
Speaker 4: really got going. And I had always looked at Vannigans
20:14
Speaker 4: and thought they looked very interesting and cool and ostentatious.
20:17
Speaker 1: And then they are all yeah, yeah and slightly terrifizing time.
20:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, very terrib You got to be a bit of
20:25
Speaker 3: a massacres. But yeah. I was taking a Thanksgiving break
20:29
Speaker 3: and I was like a friend's mind was like, go
20:30
Speaker 3: to Maui and I was looking.
20:33
Speaker 4: At airbnbs, and then somebody listened to Van again there
20:36
Speaker 4: and I was like, yeah, I'll take a van again.
20:38
Speaker 4: I like something about the idea of yeah, I'll get
20:39
Speaker 4: a van and just drive around an island and stay
20:41
Speaker 4: on beaches.
20:43
Speaker 3: Now this is before hashtag van life and all of that.
20:48
Speaker 3: And I got the van again, and it was all
20:50
Speaker 3: of that.
20:51
Speaker 1: And so you rented a van again in Hawaii and
20:54
Speaker 1: then you came back and you bought one.
20:57
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I got the van again, and then I
20:59
Speaker 4: did I did a I was only supposed to go
21:01
Speaker 4: for a week, and I went for a month.
21:02
Speaker 1: And I think, here's isn't it.
21:05
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
21:06
Speaker 1: Oh, but you put some crazy motor in it didn't.
21:08
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, I've got a I it was air cooled.
21:11
Speaker 4: I converted it to a one point eight turbo in it,
21:14
Speaker 4: so it all is. But I've got a bunch of it.
21:17
Speaker 3: Got like the limited slip and all those sort of
21:19
Speaker 3: fun things on it, so it.
21:20
Speaker 1: Looks like it's got a little bit of a lift,
21:21
Speaker 1: so you could at least do some.
21:23
Speaker 4: It's lifted, and I got fox shocks and I've there's
21:26
Speaker 4: some other stuff I could do with it. I definitely
21:28
Speaker 4: beg some of the I'd love to get John on
21:31
Speaker 4: the team at agile. It's a really dope suspension for
21:34
Speaker 4: for bw's like they'd make a killing, but especially with
21:38
Speaker 4: them being good friends with my buddy Chad. Of living
21:40
Speaker 4: the vane, we started out at a van again also
21:42
Speaker 4: but now it's in a sprinting.
21:44
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was a trip to watch. Yeah. Yeah.
21:48
Speaker 3: And then I was dating someone who lived on the
21:52
Speaker 3: Front Range, so I was bouncing back and.
21:53
Speaker 4: Forth between San Francisco and the Front Range, and I
21:55
Speaker 4: got tired of flying, so I bought the van again
21:59
Speaker 4: and that just really started changing things because I knew
22:02
Speaker 4: the first rule of any good road trip is to
22:04
Speaker 4: stay off the Interstates, and just started seeing ridiculously, like.
22:11
Speaker 1: There's a lot to see between those two spots.
22:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I stumbled across the Valley of the Gods
22:17
Speaker 4: not knowing it was there, and.
22:19
Speaker 3: IM go Valley of the Gods, I wonder what that
22:20
Speaker 3: is and I hung the left.
22:23
Speaker 1: And you probably did that at a time when there.
22:27
Speaker 1: I used to. I had a favorite camp spot in
22:30
Speaker 1: Valley of the Gods, towards the north end of that
22:32
Speaker 1: little loop, and every time I went there it was
22:35
Speaker 1: available because it was also like you needed a little
22:37
Speaker 1: bit of ground clearance to get back to the campsite.
22:40
Speaker 1: Now every time I go there, it's taken. It's yeah,
22:43
Speaker 1: completely changed.
22:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially on the Yeah, I still get spots, but
22:48
Speaker 4: I don't assume to get necessarily my favorite one. And
22:52
Speaker 4: I certainly don't expect to look out.
22:54
Speaker 3: Across the valley and be the only one there. And
22:58
Speaker 3: like when I rolled in, it was gosh, this was
23:02
Speaker 3: like late March and early April.
23:03
Speaker 4: So there were these thunderstorms rolling through at sunset and
23:09
Speaker 4: the sun was like shining underneath the clouds, lighting up
23:12
Speaker 4: the rain. All Golden got teary eyed and started crying,
23:17
Speaker 4: this is absurd. Yeah, And that was just like, okay,
23:23
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm going to do this and find and
23:27
Speaker 4: leave tech. This is before remote working and all that
23:30
Speaker 4: sort of stuff.
23:30
Speaker 1: Was what did you even? Really, what did you do
23:33
Speaker 1: in tech?
23:34
Speaker 4: I was a product designer effectively, and then made it
23:37
Speaker 4: into management, was running teams of designers and all that
23:40
Speaker 4: sort of stuff. I liked the more nerdy stuff, Like
23:43
Speaker 4: I did a bunch of stuff in ad tech and
23:45
Speaker 4: then in designing software for people to There's been a
23:48
Speaker 4: big consolidation in the farming, like this consolidation in every
23:52
Speaker 4: industry really, but for big farming. It's instead of a
23:54
Speaker 4: farmer working on two hundred acres, it's a farmer running
23:57
Speaker 4: two hundred thousand acres.
23:59
Speaker 3: And how does he wantage?
23:59
Speaker 4: That used to be with post it notes and a
24:01
Speaker 4: lot of walkie talkies and now with modern enterprise software
24:05
Speaker 4: and there's a much better way to do it.
24:07
Speaker 1: And then they even know where the machines are with GPS.
24:10
Speaker 4: And real time stuff and even programming what fields and
24:15
Speaker 4: their inputs, outputs, all that sort of crazy stuff.
24:18
Speaker 3: And then I did that for a bit, and then
24:19
Speaker 3: I got offered a.
24:20
Speaker 4: Gig at a company making the remote devices to control
24:24
Speaker 4: oil and gas wells, and I thought, I actually would like.
24:28
Speaker 3: To understand how the oil and gas industry operates.
24:32
Speaker 4: And it really was a sort of thing where it
24:33
Speaker 4: was an old man in a white truck who would
24:35
Speaker 4: walk up to a gas well and literally listen to
24:37
Speaker 4: it to be able to tell what was going well
24:39
Speaker 4: with it or what was working with it and not
24:41
Speaker 4: and make a few adjustments right there, which is a
24:43
Speaker 4: big modernization happening because that sort of level of control
24:47
Speaker 4: leads to an unbelievable amount of.
24:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, the.
24:53
Speaker 4: Bad pipelines that leak oil and gas exist all over
24:58
Speaker 4: our country. If you just google map of oil pipelines
25:03
Speaker 4: in North America will blow your mind.
25:05
Speaker 3: That need to be modernized, Yeah, make them safer.
25:08
Speaker 1: If they're going to be there, make them safer.
25:11
Speaker 3: Yeah.
25:11
Speaker 1: Sure. And a special thanks to Dometic for their support
25:17
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25:21
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25:44
Speaker 1: That makes a big difference when you're sleeping next to
25:47
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25:51
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25:55
Speaker 1: design and color. The CFX five will cool down to
25:59
Speaker 1: minus seven degrees fahrenheit and has a three stage low
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26:07
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26:25
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, that's interesting and we're fascinating.
26:28
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up?
26:30
Speaker 3: We're in the part of Detroit.
26:31
Speaker 4: Only did a minute there because my dad was lucky
26:33
Speaker 4: enough to the GI Bill as a nomvet to a
26:36
Speaker 4: to be able to go to college for his family
26:38
Speaker 4: to do that. And then it wis concept for a minute,
26:40
Speaker 4: but because of Northeastern Pennsylvania Hill middle of high school.
26:44
Speaker 1: And then that's a beautiful spot though that's all.
26:47
Speaker 3: Dead cold mining town. Yeah, it was a trip. It
26:50
Speaker 3: was a great town. It was greatful as a kid
26:52
Speaker 3: because there was no concept of not getting on your
26:57
Speaker 3: bike and riding all over town.
26:58
Speaker 4: Like you just went everywhere where. It's like where we're
27:01
Speaker 4: going to play? Which park do we want to play
27:02
Speaker 4: basketball in today? And we'd all bike five miles over
27:06
Speaker 4: to the Yeah, it was just a lot of fun.
27:09
Speaker 4: From that standpoint, there was no the free range kid
27:12
Speaker 4: thing was just part of mind.
27:14
Speaker 1: It was still a thing. Yeah, it was still a thing. Yeah.
27:16
Speaker 4: And then I went to Northern California, which was definitely
27:19
Speaker 4: a life changing thing. But when you're sixteen, right in
27:22
Speaker 4: the middle of high school, yeah, it was a trip,
27:25
Speaker 4: and then I went back East for school, spent my
27:28
Speaker 4: first ten years, started a digital agency with some friends,
27:32
Speaker 4: and then in the early thirties that reset and went
27:34
Speaker 4: out to San Francisco, finally got the job working in tech,
27:38
Speaker 4: dabbled with the Googles and facebooks, but at that point
27:41
Speaker 4: you still had to commute out of San Francisco to
27:44
Speaker 4: for the most part, with a few exceptions, and I
27:46
Speaker 4: didn't want to do that. I wanted to be in
27:48
Speaker 4: a real city that was walkable and magic. And I
27:51
Speaker 4: still actually have my apartment in San Francisco to have
27:54
Speaker 4: a friend in it, and it's still where when people
27:56
Speaker 4: asked me where I'm home, it's where I get my
27:58
Speaker 4: mail and all of that on the road all the time.
28:01
Speaker 4: I love that city.
28:04
Speaker 1: It's an amazing especially on a motorcycle. I think it's
28:06
Speaker 1: just people underestimate San Francisco. There's also just a really
28:10
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bad press that's actually only reflect
28:13
Speaker 1: it's only reflective of a very small area of the city. Yeah,
28:18
Speaker 1: very isolated. It's actually not at all reality incredibly contained. Yeah,
28:23
Speaker 1: it's like a maybe a ten block by ten block
28:26
Speaker 1: area if that, And I didn't even I ended up
28:29
Speaker 1: walking basically right by it and didn't feel unsafe for anything. Yeah,
28:35
Speaker 1: it was it was, Yes, it was intense and the house.
28:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the homeless thing. Like you'll go to.
28:43
Speaker 4: Fast forward to what I was leaving Tech, and I
28:48
Speaker 4: started out doing a lot of travel photography and videography
28:50
Speaker 4: because that's what people started wanting to buy my photos,
28:53
Speaker 4: and it's like I need them to pay me to
28:55
Speaker 4: do that. Pretty Much every desk nation marketing organization or
29:01
Speaker 4: tours on board I talked to has at some point
29:03
Speaker 4: brought up the issue and said, we have a real
29:07
Speaker 4: problem with homelessness here. And it doesn't matter whether you're
29:10
Speaker 4: in Breckenridge, Colorado, or Florence, Oregon, or Salem or Bend
29:17
Speaker 4: or it doesn't matter. Like it's just a thing that
29:19
Speaker 4: exists across the country. And it's funny to me that
29:22
Speaker 4: they talk about it like it's somehow more unique in
29:25
Speaker 4: San Francisco, because that's not been my experience.
29:27
Speaker 3: Whether I'm in Austin or Houston.
29:30
Speaker 1: Or any place that the weather is temperate, there's going
29:34
Speaker 1: to be a homelessness problem. Yeah.
29:36
Speaker 3: And then there's like a migration thing like as we
29:38
Speaker 3: saw it in a couple towns in Montana.
29:40
Speaker 4: In the summer's Yeah, it's just you don't want to
29:43
Speaker 4: be down and you want to be homeless in Phoenix
29:46
Speaker 4: in the middle of August.
29:47
Speaker 1: No, it'll be a short stant. So that's one of
29:53
Speaker 1: the things that that I always found really compelling about
29:58
Speaker 1: you and your organization is even though you run these
30:02
Speaker 1: very community oriented events and you do come across as
30:07
Speaker 1: this very genuine traveler, behind the scenes, you have some
30:12
Speaker 1: really strong business acumen and you have a really good
30:15
Speaker 1: understanding of both brand and how to tell stories. So
30:19
Speaker 1: I think that one of the things that I wanted
30:22
Speaker 1: to cover on this podcast was just that concept of
30:25
Speaker 1: that people see you, they see Josiah as the guy
30:30
Speaker 1: with the hat hanging out with the van again. But
30:33
Speaker 1: you've done a lot in your life that has put
30:36
Speaker 1: you in a unique position to be able to run
30:38
Speaker 1: this business. What are some things that you think that
30:41
Speaker 1: people should know about you and about your business that
30:44
Speaker 1: maybe they don't.
30:46
Speaker 4: The business started out with me doing deciding I wanted
30:50
Speaker 4: to get out of tech in San Francisco because it's
30:53
Speaker 4: a little bit soul stealing if you're not at the
30:58
Speaker 4: right company. I think that's why I picked very science
31:02
Speaker 4: oriented places to work like. It was a company called
31:05
Speaker 4: Granular it was focused on agtech, and another one that
31:08
Speaker 4: was focused on resource extraction. I liked to geek out
31:11
Speaker 4: on things, but I started out just as a freelance
31:14
Speaker 4: photographer and videographer. And I always, because I'd run a
31:16
Speaker 4: business in my twenties, had my understand the importance of
31:21
Speaker 4: knowing what you're selling and the ROI for who you're
31:24
Speaker 4: selling to. And I looked around and saw who were
31:29
Speaker 4: feasible customers for me, and I knew I was never
31:32
Speaker 4: going to be Alex Hanoald getting sponsored by north Face
31:35
Speaker 4: to free solo bell Cap and then having had a
31:42
Speaker 4: van again. What I started to run into is I
31:45
Speaker 4: was working with tourism boards. Is that because I was
31:47
Speaker 4: just a freelance photographer and videographer, what they wanted me
31:51
Speaker 4: to do was very prescribed. It was like, shoot the
31:53
Speaker 4: photos and videos of the top five hiking trails in
31:56
Speaker 4: our area. I don't mind that to an extent, but
31:59
Speaker 4: it was and how I liked to travel, and I
32:03
Speaker 4: didn't like the restraint and of my sort of editorial
32:08
Speaker 4: perspective on how I like to go to a place
32:12
Speaker 4: and be there for a month to get a sense
32:14
Speaker 4: of the people and personalities and the culture and the
32:17
Speaker 4: rhythm and the vibe of a town like Basboo or
32:21
Speaker 4: a town like Tucson or Laguna Beach or Ocean Spow
32:25
Speaker 4: or lapass I like to feel what it is to
32:28
Speaker 4: be there, to meet folks and why they love it
32:31
Speaker 4: and where are the local watering holes, but also what
32:34
Speaker 4: are their favorite trails and things to do. Is It
32:36
Speaker 4: was a summer I was doing a project for Washington
32:41
Speaker 4: State Tourism.
32:43
Speaker 3: I was sitting there with some friends in Seattle, and
32:45
Speaker 3: I was like, I think.
32:45
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I think I should just start my own
32:48
Speaker 4: magazine or something like that where I can have editorial
32:51
Speaker 4: control and talking with a friendly It's about it kind
32:54
Speaker 4: of experiences where you lose track of time, you get
32:56
Speaker 4: so immersed in the experience.
32:58
Speaker 3: And that's where it came with thejournal Have Lost Time.
33:01
Speaker 1: Which is a great which is a great title, and
33:04
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful magazine. It's just you've done such a
33:06
Speaker 1: great job of curating that content, and it's certainly a
33:11
Speaker 1: reflection of your own interest, which I think is what's
33:14
Speaker 1: so important. It was the same with Overland Journal. I
33:16
Speaker 1: just I wanted to create the magazine that I wanted
33:20
Speaker 1: to read.
33:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I looked up to you guys other people.
33:24
Speaker 1: Wouldn't want to read it too, and it turns out
33:26
Speaker 1: that they did.
33:27
Speaker 4: But I mean when I was doing I was like,
33:29
Speaker 4: what are the ones that I really look up to,
33:31
Speaker 4: And yours was on that list. I was like, absolutely
33:34
Speaker 4: just slightly broader. Yeah anyway, Yeah, it was very much
33:38
Speaker 4: like hell yeah Overland Journal.
33:40
Speaker 3: But even just like.
33:42
Speaker 4: When I had a good friend do all like the
33:44
Speaker 4: identity design, like I wanted it to feel timeless, yeah,
33:47
Speaker 4: and almost like an academic journal. Yeah yeah, anyway, anyway,
33:51
Speaker 4: and I still haven't gotten a print edition done, but
33:52
Speaker 4: it's just because I don't have time.
33:53
Speaker 3: Damn time. Like we've got the content anyway, It's another story.
33:57
Speaker 3: But yeah.
33:58
Speaker 4: The events happened while on a production in Baja for
34:02
Speaker 4: several brands who were sponsoring the production trip to do
34:06
Speaker 4: a story about a road trip in Baja, and we
34:11
Speaker 4: kept meeting other over This is seven years and six
34:15
Speaker 4: years ago, and we kept meeting other Overlanders of the time,
34:19
Speaker 4: like the pandemic spike hadn't happened. It was just starting
34:23
Speaker 4: to get gone. The band life thing there wasn't the
34:26
Speaker 4: rush of sprinters and all that stuff yet, and I
34:29
Speaker 4: knew of Tekelote and I was like, Hey, let's all
34:31
Speaker 4: just meet on this beach. And then sixty rigs just
34:34
Speaker 4: showed up via word of mouth and the events just
34:37
Speaker 4: took off. It became their own sort of business unit
34:40
Speaker 4: thing that I'm still heavily involved in, but ideally I'd
34:45
Speaker 4: love to, on a personal level get back to being
34:49
Speaker 4: more involved with the Journal of Lost Time. And they're
34:53
Speaker 4: still the content studio, which is great in light, which
34:55
Speaker 4: is run by my business partner Nate, who's up in
34:58
Speaker 4: a lot of almost all all of the content we
35:00
Speaker 4: produced in the studio on behalf of brands and tourism
35:04
Speaker 4: boards also goes out on the Journal of Lost Time
35:08
Speaker 4: and the various media channels that we run, which are numers,
35:14
Speaker 4: Instagram accounts, and email list of eighty thousand, et cetera,
35:17
Speaker 4: et cetera.
35:17
Speaker 3: Then we have the events.
35:19
Speaker 4: Then we have something recently we purchased called simpler Ways,
35:23
Speaker 4: which is a marketplace for a lot of vehicular based adventuring,
35:28
Speaker 4: and we're in the middle of a redesign of that.
35:30
Speaker 4: And because we were doing ticketing sales for the event,
35:34
Speaker 4: we just staid using something like event right, we just
35:37
Speaker 4: suddenly pumped all the ticket sales to that site, which
35:40
Speaker 4: was instant, massive traffic spike and the ability for our
35:44
Speaker 4: sponsors to upsell them. I can't be a sponsor our
35:48
Speaker 4: events and we'll put your product in the marketplace and
35:50
Speaker 4: when they buy tickets, we're like, hey, do you also
35:52
Speaker 4: want to get this anchor power station or these max tracts, board,
35:56
Speaker 4: et cetera.
35:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some good horizontal integration maybe.
36:01
Speaker 1: Some cases like a nice big upper funnel that you're
36:04
Speaker 1: driving down to those events equipment sales and yeah.
36:09
Speaker 3: So I've had to play. I've had to learn how
36:11
Speaker 3: to be a CEO and tell that bigger story, even
36:16
Speaker 3: though I.
36:18
Speaker 4: Very much miss sitting and writing and taking photos and
36:22
Speaker 4: telling a story about a very specifical which I'll.
36:24
Speaker 3: Get back to. I'll get back to once I get
36:26
Speaker 3: the right people in the right places. Hey, you pulled
36:29
Speaker 3: it off, and I figure you can pull it off.
36:30
Speaker 1: Some days I did.
36:31
Speaker 3: Sometimes I didn't, but just maybe I could get there.
36:34
Speaker 1: It depends on the day.
36:35
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Oh, I definitely look at you and I'm like, man,
36:38
Speaker 4: Scott pulled it off.
36:39
Speaker 3: I got to be able to do it. I'll get
36:41
Speaker 3: the work if.
36:42
Speaker 1: I can pull it off.
36:43
Speaker 3: I know you can, that's for sure.
36:45
Speaker 1: One of one of the things that I wanted to
36:47
Speaker 1: make sure we covered too is your travels and the
36:50
Speaker 1: time that you spend really slow traveling in places. What
36:53
Speaker 1: advice would you give to travelers to really be able
36:57
Speaker 1: to go a little deeper where we're not so much
37:01
Speaker 1: that stone skipping across the surface. What are some things
37:04
Speaker 1: that you've learned that helps you get dig into a place.
37:08
Speaker 4: I'm naturally an extrovert, so that's a little bit of
37:10
Speaker 4: a cheat code for talking with people. But really it
37:13
Speaker 4: just takes that kind of bravery, like the getting over
37:16
Speaker 4: the fear of talking to another human being and in
37:19
Speaker 4: a very real way, nine times out of ten, other
37:23
Speaker 4: human beings are feeling just as awkward around a bunch
37:27
Speaker 4: of apes.
37:27
Speaker 3: We're a bunch of anxious apes. And if you just
37:29
Speaker 3: give them a smile and ask them, Like when you're
37:32
Speaker 3: in a place like Baha and.
37:33
Speaker 4: You're standing there on the beach and there's somebody doesn't
37:35
Speaker 4: know you, like, I guarantee you that the feeling, the
37:37
Speaker 4: joy and the beauty of the place and just go
37:39
Speaker 4: is in this place beautiful and that gets the conversation started.
37:42
Speaker 4: So it's just you're taking that first step. In other
37:45
Speaker 4: parts of the world, the biggest cheat code I've found
37:49
Speaker 4: is the local dive bar and talking to somebody there
37:52
Speaker 4: and the bartender like it works your girlfriend.
37:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, definitely go do that.
37:59
Speaker 1: Help people getting rubble and dive bars.
38:02
Speaker 3: Happened to me once, only happened to me once. In Toledo,
38:08
Speaker 3: you got the whole town after you. Then, Yeah, I
38:10
Speaker 3: was at the entire local volunteer fire department.
38:12
Speaker 1: Have to be.
38:14
Speaker 3: They were like, Charlie's name, and I think you got
38:21
Speaker 3: to get out of here. I don't know what did
38:23
Speaker 3: I do. It's great, it's great. Yeah, that's it. You know,
38:26
Speaker 3: if you're religious too, you can hit the church on Sunday.
38:29
Speaker 4: It's a great yeah, folks, But that's like also that
38:32
Speaker 4: gets at one of the reasons for the events existence
38:36
Speaker 4: is the loss of the third spaces. I don't know
38:40
Speaker 4: if you're familiar with that concept of the local park,
38:43
Speaker 4: the neighborhood bar, the bowling alley churches. In these places
38:48
Speaker 4: that aren't work and they aren't our homes where we
38:50
Speaker 4: could actually meet and gather and form new connections.
38:55
Speaker 3: And build social capital and meet people.
38:58
Speaker 4: And that's a problem that exists with the way we've
39:01
Speaker 4: designed most of the living space in our country being
39:05
Speaker 4: a vehicle based thing where everything's spread out in suburbs,
39:10
Speaker 4: and our towns aren't cities from the most part are
39:13
Speaker 4: not walkable, with some exceptions, and that definitely was exacerbated
39:17
Speaker 4: by the pandemic.
39:18
Speaker 3: Suddenly we're all hold up in our homes.
39:21
Speaker 4: I think, as somebody who lived through and experienced it,
39:26
Speaker 4: I think we were naive. And the way we thought
39:30
Speaker 4: of the internet as a way to bring people together,
39:33
Speaker 4: I think we've all come to see that maybe it
39:36
Speaker 4: was a bad idea to let anyone say anything to
39:40
Speaker 4: everyone all over the time.
39:42
Speaker 3: Some downsides to that events.
39:45
Speaker 1: Human beings are supposed to be in little tribes of
39:49
Speaker 1: thirty forty, fifty sixty people where there's a consequence to
39:52
Speaker 1: that kind of behavior, and that's very recent history. Within
39:59
Speaker 1: the last we years, people were still in small towns
40:03
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, as.
40:04
Speaker 4: A species, we're still learning how not to kill each
40:10
Speaker 4: other on a radular basis. Just we're still not we're
40:14
Speaker 4: still doing it. Yeah, but we've got it. We've got
40:17
Speaker 4: a lot of years of a lot of generations to
40:21
Speaker 4: go through, I think before we adjust to whatever the
40:24
Speaker 4: heck this new thing is.
40:26
Speaker 1: I also wanted to take a brief moment to thank
40:29
Speaker 1: all of you for listening to the Ovalan Dural podcast.
40:32
Speaker 1: By listening to this podcast and subscribing to The Ovalan
40:35
Speaker 1: Journal magazine, you're supporting our employee own and veteran owned business.
40:41
Speaker 1: Impartial reviews and in depth content like this would not
40:44
Speaker 1: be possible without your support. If you enjoy the podcast,
40:48
Speaker 1: I think you'd really love the print magazine as well,
40:52
Speaker 1: And of that subscription price goes back into creating the
40:56
Speaker 1: content like you're listening to right now. And as a
41:00
Speaker 1: special thank you for your loyalty, we're giving twenty percent
41:03
Speaker 1: off any subscription and that even includes our special lifetime
41:07
Speaker 1: subscription which includes numerous lifetime only benefits. You can go
41:13
Speaker 1: to Overland Journal dot com and use the Code Overland
41:16
Speaker 1: podcast at checkout in that's Code Overland Podcast at checkout,
41:22
Speaker 1: and I'll give you twenty percent off. I sincerely appreciate
41:25
Speaker 1: your support, but I think it also speaks to why
41:28
Speaker 1: It speaks to why your events are so important, and
41:31
Speaker 1: it speaks to why I really wanted to have you
41:34
Speaker 1: on the podcast was just for people to know about
41:37
Speaker 1: what it is that you're doing and why these events
41:40
Speaker 1: feel very different and you're not talking about thousands and
41:43
Speaker 1: thousands of people. Your biggest event is around you know,
41:46
Speaker 1: you said around fifteen hundred people or so, and some
41:48
Speaker 1: of them are smaller.
41:49
Speaker 3: So yeah, mostly smaller.
41:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really gives the opportunity for people to connect
41:55
Speaker 1: if you're looking for something different, because now the industry
41:59
Speaker 1: is big enough where there is a bunch of different
42:01
Speaker 1: offerings and depending on what you're feeling, you can connect
42:04
Speaker 1: in with the ways that you want.
42:06
Speaker 4: We aim for a real balance between like we really
42:08
Speaker 4: push for the idea of no spectators, but that's an
42:12
Speaker 4: ideal which I unequivocally stole from Burning Man, but the
42:17
Speaker 4: idea that a lot of the programming at our events
42:20
Speaker 4: are driven by ten days who have a fun thing
42:22
Speaker 4: that they like to do. There's this fantastic group of
42:24
Speaker 4: ladies who are who drive Storyteller Overland Sprinters and they
42:29
Speaker 4: do traditional like knitting. They've got like the old wheels
42:33
Speaker 4: so that it's been their own yarn and stuff like that,
42:35
Speaker 4: and they like set up and they'll do like a
42:36
Speaker 4: class about that. But then there's you know, no mad
42:39
Speaker 4: speed dating that a guy named Dylan and a woman
42:42
Speaker 4: named Grace really love to do. But then we also
42:44
Speaker 4: have we have the brands there like Max Tracts will
42:47
Speaker 4: do a safety and recovery course and like Anchor will
42:53
Speaker 4: do all sorts of stuff on like whole home power
42:56
Speaker 4: systems and how they're transferable.
42:58
Speaker 3: Into your vehicle if that's something you want want to do.
43:00
Speaker 3: We've got a lot of fun stuff like that.
43:02
Speaker 4: And then our music and night we try to hire
43:04
Speaker 4: what there are event moon Landing that's coming up. We've
43:07
Speaker 4: got a couple of really awesome local New Mexico bands
43:10
Speaker 4: who also happen to be from the house pueblo up
43:12
Speaker 4: in the north now where the events held is Navajo.
43:15
Speaker 4: Which house Pobler not Navajo. It's two different countries and
43:18
Speaker 4: two different languages, et cetera, but both really awesome bands,
43:22
Speaker 4: and we really try to like connect into the state
43:25
Speaker 4: in that way.
43:25
Speaker 3: But we try to have a nice balance. And what
43:28
Speaker 3: I tell the brands when we're talking to them is
43:30
Speaker 3: you're part of.
43:31
Speaker 4: This community, like you've built your business on it, like ye,
43:35
Speaker 4: this is your customers are and by the way, and
43:37
Speaker 4: like every single one of the qualified lead, Like, I'm
43:40
Speaker 4: not anti commerce at all, but I just the expectation
43:43
Speaker 4: is that come out from behind the table and be
43:46
Speaker 4: part of the community and give people a reason to
43:49
Speaker 4: stand in front of you for an hour talking about
43:52
Speaker 4: what you're doing. There are some brands that really get that,
43:54
Speaker 4: and others it's much easier to think about things in
43:57
Speaker 4: terms of their ten by ten booth just standing there.
44:01
Speaker 4: And I think you and I have seen that kind
44:05
Speaker 4: of commercialism slowly push out the soul of some of
44:09
Speaker 4: the events that we really liked. I know I've experienced
44:11
Speaker 4: that at a couple of the couple of the bigger
44:15
Speaker 4: expos and that was sad to feel that.
44:18
Speaker 3: Happened because I went to meet folks like you and
44:22
Speaker 3: my yeah, some.
44:23
Speaker 4: Of my heroes in the overlanding world, and to see
44:25
Speaker 4: them not embraced quite as much as they used to
44:28
Speaker 4: be is sad. But yeah, anyway, and I'm grabbit holing apologies,
44:32
Speaker 4: but yeah, that's what we travel the events too, even
44:34
Speaker 4: with the brands, is.
44:35
Speaker 1: To make sure work it's working. Let's talk about how
44:38
Speaker 1: people connect in with what you're doing, So how do
44:40
Speaker 1: they find you on social media? What's let's go through
44:44
Speaker 1: your website again. Yeah, everything is that I read the
44:47
Speaker 1: Journal of Lost Time.
44:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, everything is the Journal of Lost Time. There definitely
44:51
Speaker 4: multi channel. There's the website, there's the Instagram account, which
44:54
Speaker 4: is very active. Obviously on Facebook two it was a
44:58
Speaker 4: pretty big Facebook age and stuff like that.
45:01
Speaker 3: There's email list.
45:02
Speaker 4: Every other week the newsletter goes out. It's usually a
45:04
Speaker 4: blend of articles that we've pushed that week, or sometimes
45:08
Speaker 4: it's one from a few years ago, stuff about the event,
45:11
Speaker 4: whatever the next event is now, some of the products
45:15
Speaker 4: that we're doing in reviews on simpler ways slowly as
45:19
Speaker 4: we're doing that, and sometimes we'll promote it if it's
45:21
Speaker 4: an event that is community centric in nature like Northwest
45:27
Speaker 4: Nomads or a rebel rally or something like that, like
45:30
Speaker 4: we'll hype it. We'll just we've got no problem promoting
45:34
Speaker 4: that even though for yeah, because it's just it's awesome
45:37
Speaker 4: when a frenzy do it, and thing's really dope. But anyway,
45:40
Speaker 4: it is, yeah, super cool, and we've been fortunate to
45:43
Speaker 4: have some friends who do it then come teach navigation
45:47
Speaker 4: courses at some of our events, which has been really cool,
45:50
Speaker 4: Tamma Jones and others. But yeah, that's the best way
45:52
Speaker 4: he can find the start of everything at the Journal
45:54
Speaker 4: of Lost Time, and that'll push you out to all
45:56
Speaker 4: the various channels.
45:57
Speaker 3: Hell, we're on interest always pushing and videos and stuff
46:01
Speaker 3: like that.
46:01
Speaker 4: Every channel is a little different, so we have to
46:03
Speaker 4: learn how to adapt it to that and that audience
46:06
Speaker 4: haven't fully gone all in on the TikTok thing.
46:09
Speaker 3: It's hard because we love I love long form.
46:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, storytelling.
46:14
Speaker 3: That's why I love Overland Journal. You guys do.
46:16
Speaker 1: And it's okay. If everybody's going right, it's okay to
46:20
Speaker 1: go left, it's just fine to Yeah.
46:22
Speaker 4: Our average yeah, our average time per article is like
46:26
Speaker 4: right now, a little over three minutes.
46:28
Speaker 1: Perfect.
46:29
Speaker 3: Who does like the average time on it? Yeah, yeah,
46:32
Speaker 3: we're and.
46:33
Speaker 4: It's not a huge audience on the website, but like
46:36
Speaker 4: our completion rate on swipe throughs for a ten slide
46:39
Speaker 4: Instagram carousel post is like just under ninety percent, Like
46:43
Speaker 4: who has that? Because there's a story being told. I
46:47
Speaker 4: don't know, I don't know, Like I'm learning how to
46:49
Speaker 4: be a businessman.
46:51
Speaker 1: I think you're doing a great I think you're doing
46:54
Speaker 1: a great job.
46:54
Speaker 3: And we're in the so it's not too bad.
46:57
Speaker 1: But No, I'm really proud of the work that you do,
47:00
Speaker 1: and it's why I wanted to have you on the podcast.
47:02
Speaker 1: I just wanted people to be aware of your events.
47:05
Speaker 1: I had an incredible time at your event. I'm looking
47:09
Speaker 1: forward to going to more in the future. And I
47:12
Speaker 1: just really encourage people to check out what you're doing.
47:15
Speaker 1: And it's a it's an outline just in an industry.
47:18
Speaker 4: So I just want, yeah, I want the folks that
47:22
Speaker 4: love what they're doing to come and talk about it,
47:24
Speaker 4: like we'll put them on stage. Moon Landing is fun
47:26
Speaker 4: because it's the first time we've got like a main stage,
47:29
Speaker 4: but then we have a design and engineering tent and
47:30
Speaker 4: then a health and wellness tent because there's always an
47:33
Speaker 4: army of yoga and breath work and sound healing folks
47:37
Speaker 4: and every.
47:40
Speaker 1: All make a difference.
47:42
Speaker 3: How do they want to make breathing work. It's the
47:43
Speaker 3: one thing I do without thinking, and.
47:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, somehow it makes things better. Man. Yeah, Josiah dude, thank.
47:53
Speaker 3: You so much for being on the prom Thanks for
47:55
Speaker 3: having me.
47:55
Speaker 1: I really appreciate everything that you do. I encourage everyone
47:58
Speaker 1: to check out the Journal of Lost Time, and I
48:01
Speaker 1: look forward to hopefully seeing you in La Pause sometime
48:04
Speaker 1: in January.
48:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, and if you're in Prescott after afternoon landing I
48:09
Speaker 4: went through, maybe grab a beer or something.
48:12
Speaker 3: San Diego, but yeah, cool coold love to see you.
48:15
Speaker 3: It'd be awesome.
48:16
Speaker 1: Man. Thank you. I appreciate you being on the podcast,
48:19
Speaker 1: and we thank you all for listening and we'll talk
48:21
Speaker 1: to you next time.
48:23
Speaker 3: Thanks. Be